Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Our very soul and our very body we carry exposed in this world to every kind of injury, and we submit to patience under that injury — shall we then be wounded by the mere nibbling-away of lesser things? Far be it from a servant of Christ to bear such a stain, that patience, trained up for the greatest trials, should collapse over trifles! If someone tries to provoke you with his hand, the Lord's own coinage lies ready: To him who strikes you on the cheek, he says, turn the other also. Let your patience wear his wickedness out: whatever that blow was, bound up as it is with pain and insult, he will be beaten far worse by the Lord; the more you endure his blows, the harder you strike the wicked man — for it is on your account that he will be beaten by God. If the tongue's bitterness bursts out in curse or reviling, recall what stands written: Whenever a curse is thrown at you, take joy in it. The Lord himself, under the law, bore a curse, and yet blessedness belongs to him alone. Let us then, being merely servants, imitate our Master, and endure the curse with patience, so that afterward blessedness may fall to our share too! If I cannot manage to hear some insolent or worthless remark aimed at me without flinching, then I am left with only two options: to return spite for spite, or to be racked by a silent, seething impatience. And if I answer back with a curse of my own, in what sense could it be said that I have kept step with the Lord's teaching, which hands down that a man is defiled not by what is unclean in his vessels, but by what comes out of his mouth — and likewise that we remain liable for every vain and useless word? It follows, then, that the very thing the Lord bars us from doing, he bids us bear calmly when another does it to us. Here now is the true pleasure of patience. For every injury, whether launched by tongue or by hand, once it strikes against patience, will be blunted with the same result as a dart hurled and flattened against a rock of unyielding hardness: it will collapse right there, its effort wasted and fruitless, and sometimes, rebounding, it will fly back in fury against the very one who let it fly. The reason someone wounds you, of course, is to make you grieve, since the wounder's profit lies in the grief of the wounded. So when you overturn his profit by refusing to grieve, he himself cannot help but grieve at the loss of his profit. Then you will not merely walk away unwounded — though that alone would be enough for you — but, over and above, you will have delighted in your adversary's frustration and been avenged by his very pain. This is both the usefulness and the pleasure of patience!